There is an air of romance about Boreham House, as seen from the tree-embowered road at a little distance from New Hall; an altogether deceptive air, let it be said, for the house is modern; a classic building of white brick. It is its situation at the head of a formal lake, fringed with stately elms, that confers the illusory distinction, but the explorer of old roads, who halts here and listens to the cawing rooks on the swaying tree-tops, or watches the water-fowl squattering on the lake, can weave his own romance to fit the scene. And if the house, though stately, be modern, yet it holds something of interest in the shape of the identical carriage used by the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo. Greatly daring, they dragged it out in recent years to grace a Chelmsford holiday, when it was broken to pieces in an accident. Restored now to its original condition, it will need to be a great occasion indeed that brings it forth again. [Illustration: BOREHAM.] Boreham village lies hidden from the road, its old gabled cottages clustering round the still older church, itself embowered in lime trees whose delightful scent weights the July air with an Arcadian languor. The explorer who adventures into Boreham has every likelihood of having his nerves startled by the sudden glimpse at a bend of the road of a great mausoleum in the churchyard, with the door open, and, if it be midday, the sight, apparently, of one of the inmates of the silent tomb making a hearty lunch of bread-and-cheese. High noon being an hour when the supernatural is not so terrifying as to daunt investigation, it becomes evident on drawing nearer that the old tomb-house has been converted into a tool-house and general lumber-room, and that the figure seated within is the sexton enjoying his lunch, screened from the noonday heats. An inscription over the door of the ornate building--a copy of the Temple of the Winds at Athens--proclaims it the "Mausoleum Gentis Walthamianæ, Anno 1764"; but the Walthams have disappeared, both from their mausoleum and the district. The body of the last appears to have been arrested for debt when on the road hither from Chelmsford. The sexton explains that the parish took over the Walthams' last home in consideration of repairing the ruinated roof. "We ha'n't the conwenience hee-ar, years ago," says this typical Essex rustic, and goes on to tell how the oil and coals and candles for church use were formerly stored in the Radcliffe Chapel, where the Sunday School was also held. Three Radcliffes, Earls of Sussex, 1542-1583, grandfather, father, and son, lie in effigy side by side on an altar-tomb in that chapel, "as like as my fingers are to my fingers." "Old wawriors," the sexton calls them, and explains that their broken noses are due to the "ruff" having fallen in, years since.